Ryan Kuhn
by Ranekaera
Summary: Ryan and Ran go on a hunt...for a dead body. His! In the last chapter, they go trick or treating... ...
1. Ryan remembers

Note by the author: This story is rated for violence, language, and yes, though you may not think so, the insanity of Ryan. Only those who truly know what madness is like would agree that the crazed thought of a madman can be psychologically harmful.

Read on.

p.s. I don't really know if they had swears this creative in the 1800's, so that's for your entertainment.

"RrrrraaaaaaagGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! LEEET MEEEEE OUUUTTT!" Ryan screamed. His head was bleeding, his neck hurt from the constant weight of the cage they'd placed on his it, and his torn and sorry fingers throbbed in agony. His hair hung in his face, he needed a shave and, most bizarre of all, he was homesick for the outside world. It took him awhile to figure out what, exactly, he missed. Then the thought hit him, and he began to laugh hysterically.

He missed his mother.

Of all the things, he missed his fucking mother! The slutbag! But no. The thoughts constantly swirling through his mind, incessantly moving, and never making any sense, began to really bug him as memories of his mother joined the traffic.

Cookies

_(the slut)_

Baking on the stove, rats

_(in the corners, yum, the blood runs)_

Caught in the mousetraps, mother handing him a pair of socks

_("wait up, muma, I can't run that fast!" she is running, playing with)_

For Christmas, oh, how he can hardly remember

_(me. How I love her, her golden hair, _

"Fucking dog! Fucking scoundreless! Take that!"

_(he kicks the dog, its yellow fur, so like her hair, running with bits of filth)_

"Ryan! Smile for the camera! Be a good boy!" she croons, and as she smiles at him, he hates her, hates her for what she is

_(kick the bitch, kick her, wait)_

"Ryan, what are you doing?" she's screaming, but I can't hear her, no, her golden hair ain't so golden now, oh no, it's red now

_(smash her sky blue eyes in, make them bleed, she's the succubus, she's my)_

"MOTHER!"

Ryan screams this last thought aloud in the dark, dingy confines of his bleak basement cell. He lets himself fall to his knees and touches the cage on his head to the floor, sobbing now, where he was laughing at the absurdity of it all.

"Mother… make them let me out, tempt them like you tempted me…oh you bitch…" he mutters. He is not even aware he is muttering, not aware he is saying anything at all.

Suddenly, he hears the jangle of keys and the muted click of footsteps outside the door.

_They're coming for me._ He thinks, bunching up the wasted muscles of his thighs, preparing to leap.

The door opens and they are carrying some strange new metal contraption into the room, and he leaps for the nearest doctor, arms outstretched as if to give him a big hug, but no, that's not what he has in mind, instead, he knocks the man to the floor and begins tearing at his clothes, his pants, everything he can reach. Blood droplets fly from his much abused fingers, but he hardly feels it, he hates the doctors for what they have made him become, he hates his own reflection in the puddles of water they bring him in those new, shatter-proof plastic bowls, he will make them bleed.

One doctor reaches back as if to subdue him with a fist, but Ryan flings the first doctor aside limp as a rag doll (he is hardly aware, but he has torn the man's jugular open with his bare hands) rears his head back, and slams his head, and the cage around it, into the second doctor's chest.

"Oof!" he wheezes.

Just then, a third doctor sneaks up behind Ryan with laced fists, ready to knock him out. Ryan stands, feet planted apart, panting, thin chest heaving, fingers dripping blood and waits. He can hear the man sneaking up behind him, that's what being locked in the dark will do for one's hearing and eyesight, so he waits, ready for him, when the doctor whos veins are being bled dry suddenly crawls towards Ryan's feet, and Rynz does what he did oh so long ago, and kicks out. He feels two of the dead man's teeth break, when his world suddenly goes black. 'They' have finally knocked him out, finally done it, finally got the better of Ryan Kuhn.


	2. Ryan subdued

This may be a little confusing, as it's technically taking place in two totally different time eras. Remember I said Ryan was "revisiting" his past? Which means he is already a ghost… Just for the record, Ryan, is not my character, he belongs to the people of Dark Castle Entertainment, and all other characters, settings and situations belong to me. Xylacin is the name of a zoo tranquilizer used for both zoos and sometimes humans.

"You got him?" one of the doctors asks sharply. Out of the five other occupants of the basement, Ryan Kuhn was the worst. No one ever wanted to go down to his cell. Not after what happened to his poor mother when she tried to visit him four years ago, and that had been a sorry mess to clean. First that and now Frederickston. He lay in a crumpled, bloody heap over in the corner, his mangled head and neck mercifully hidden for the most part by shadow.

"Yeah, I gave him 150 cc's of Xylacin, it won't keep him under for long, though, so let's get this over with, Henreid. You bring the razor?" asked the other doctor, the one who had been brutally head butted with a metal cage.

The man called Henreid produced it, a small handle with a hinge connected to a straight blade used for shaving. He waited while one of the other doctors applied the shaving cream to the unconscious maniac and began to shave the guy's face. Originally, they had hoped not to have to use the tranquilizer, and had brought a shearing cage, like the sort used by farmers to keep the sheep's head in place while sheering. That plan had failed, and now the strange metal contraption lay in a heap next to Frederickston.

"Someone get a sponge and mop up 'is 'ead?" asked the British doctor, Stone.

"I'm busy at the moment." Said Henreid.

He was three quarters of the way through when Ryan's bleeding and broken fingers twitched.

"Oh, Christ, he's waking up!" Henreid exclaimed, which set the others into motion. Stone applied ten more cc's of Xylacin and Ryan once again lay still, if only for the next five minutes.

"Someone get that cage out of here, and take Frederickston with you." Barked Henreid. Immediately, Hansen flung the shearing cage out the door and into the hall. He then took the dead Frederickston under the arms and began dragging him out as well. Now only Henreid, Stone, and the elderly old sailor Smitty remained with Ryan.

Hansen returned and attempted to rid himself of the memory of those torn, bleeding arteries by cracking a lame joke.

"Did it ever occur to you fellows that there are a lot of Germans working here?" he asked.

"Shut up." Said Stone.

"Yes, please do." Agreed Henreid.

He finished shaving Ryan's tired, youthful face and wiped it clean with a washrag in his pocket. The man's mouth was a mess, too, he observed. Henreid guessed he bit it a lot. His teeth were all bloody and his lips were torn to pieces. He wiped the blood off those too, and began to mop up the man's scratched forehead with the same washrag.

"I don't know why administration wants us to clean them up as well. They're insane why do they care?" asked Stone.

"That's because administration claims that seeing themselves as healthy as possible will cheer them up. I don't like it any more than you do but here we all are, so shut up and do his straitjacket will you?" replied Henreid. Stone did as he was told and helped Henreid lift Ryan into a sitting position. His head, and the cage with it, drooped forward, and the two men began tying up the jacket.

Meanwhile…

Ryan's mind was blissfully blank, and he wanted so desperately to stay asleep, this was heaven, this was bliss, not to have to think, not to have to _need, _but all good things must come to an end, hadn't his worthless mother told him that once?

First to come alive were his fingers. They hurt horribly and in his weakened state, the pain was doubled tenfold.

Second to come to light was the fact that he was not alone and someone was touching him. Instinctively, he flinched and, finding his voice, he began to scream.

"_Hey, Allen, check this out!" said a voice, distant, echo-ey, coming from upstairs. Ryan, so cold he is numb and strangely calm in his recollections, looks up at the sound and narrows his eyes in suspicion. _More people come to hurt me_ he thinks, but then remembers that no one can hurt him anymore, no one can _see _him anymore, because he died that night, so long ago now… he knew it was a long time ago, because as he steadily saw more people come to him in his burnt prison, he began to notice the clothing and hairstyles change radically…back when he was alive, it had been heavy, bodiced dresses, full skirts with ruffles and long, heavily perfumed tresses of hair. Ryan had no knowledge or awareness of the time. To him every second of every minute of every day, or even of every _year _were the same to him. He drifted through time, unknowing, unnoticed (for the most part, heh heh, he thinks) and uncaring of the years._

_But he _DID_ notice some things, like the differences. He knows he can't ever go back in time, and this makes him sad, but then he thinks _oh well_ and returns to his memories of that night in 1909, where everything went wrong._

Someone slapped him and he tried biting the man's hand, but couldn't because of the cage on his head. Instead, he began to flail, bucking his thin body up and down, from side to side, until he felt one of his arms tear free from one of the doctors.

"FUUUCKERRRRRRRRRR, LEMME GO! LEMME GO!" he screamed, gnawing on his own lip, drawing a small, deep scratch through his lower. Blood flowed in a torrent through the bars of the cage and onto his jacket. They had hurt him, they would pay, yes, make them pay, hurt them, kiiiiiiilllll them, kilthemthefuckersKILLTHEM!

"YOU CAN'T HURT ME LIKE THIS, LEMME GO! LEMEGOLEMMEGOLEMMEGOLEMMEGOOOOOOO! LET—ME—GO!" he screams, and suddenly, miraculously--_he is free.­_ He doesn't know how it happened and he doesn't care, but he is free. Then he hears the alarm.

"So loud, it hurts me, it hurts my head turn it off, turn it OOOOOOFFFF!" he screeches. Then he smells the smoke. One of the bastards must have dropped the lamp. The flames light up the gloomy dungeon cell, and he whips his head around, basking in the sudden glorious heat, filling him up like drink, making him _warm, _but then it is _too _warm, and he wants IT to go away too, but deep in his heart, he knows that this is the end. They will leave him down here to die.

"_Hey wait up, Monica! It's just a spider, for chrissakes, get back here! Monica!" a boy yells from above him. Ryan looks up with the slightest interest. _

Get out get out, I'm blissing here! _He thinks. He also thinks dimly of going up there and killing them, but in the end he waits._

"Oh, CHRIST, THERE'S A FIRE! LET'S GET OUTTA HERE!" yells one of the doctors. He turns and runs out of the room and the other doctors follow suit.

"WAIT! WAIT, DON'T LEAVE ME!" yells the younger one, the one with the dark brown ponytail, and he goes to follow, but Ryan, laughing now, because he was finally _going home_ sticks his foot out and trips the man. He goes down hard and suddenly catches on fire. He screams, and that is when Ryan feels the first of the flames lick his jacket. They burn through the worn leather straps holding his left hand captive, and now both arms are free.

_This is all your fault, all mother's fault, I'll get you, I'LL KILL YOU AGAIN! _He thinks. In his memory he sees his mother, dark purple Victorian dress with the big ruffle on the back and her bodice spilling her considerable bosom out the top, and he begins to claw at himself in a rage, as if by clawing and hurting himself, he will hurt her.

But all he feels is the pain, and that is when the cage on his head suddenly begins to melt. This new agony is too much for Ryan and he goes down on his knees, his hands and arms catching fire as well, and he sees the bars on the front of the cage grow hot, turn orange and begin to _drip_, curling over on themselves from the intense heat. He feels his eyes dry out, the gray green color his mother said his father gave him _but what would she know_ going dry, turning red, and beginning to melt like the cage, his skin peels back, bubbling, running like melted wax, and by that moment, Ryan's inner light starts to go out. He opens his mouth for the last time to scream and the fire leaps down his throught, turning his throat and lungs black, and Ryan knew no more. He passed out of the world he knew for good.

Or so I thought_. he thinks. He turns his head up the stairs again, waiting for some noise again, but none come. They must have found The Room._


	3. The Room, the asylum, 1997

Wondering what room Ryan was talking about? The story will now take place in the late 90's, and the asylum as Ryan knew it is gone.

It is now a ruin.

And Ryan still hates women.

"This place is friggin' creepy, Allen, I can't believe you dragged me into this place." She complained. Her name wasn't important, Ryan thought. She wasn't very pretty; she had deep set brown eyes and black hair, with a rather beaky nose and her clothes were much too tight… …Ryan simply stood and watched them for a moment. They were in The Room, as the patients in his time had called it. It was the storage closet where The Chair was kept, and with it all manner of cruel instruments. The Box. The Jackets. Of course, now all that was gone and the chair was nothing but a charred skeleton of rotting wood. The jackets had been removed completely, and there was only one cage left, like the cage that had been put on his own head, oh so long ago. All around the old asylum were bits of burnt wood, charred stone and trash, bits of rusty, metal instruments that had probably once been spoons, old, burnt and broken skeleton keys, and some sort of little colored cylinders of rubber coated in a scummy, ectoplasma-like substance. Ryan dimly registered it as semen, but then grew angry. He hadn't left his cell in some time, it had seemed. Now prostitutes like his mother, like this_ girl_ came in here, his _home_ and did IT, well, he would show _them _whose house it was. It was _his_.

Ryan attacked.

When it was done, and the girl and her friend lay bleeding to death on the floor, ragged chunks of flesh missing from their faces, their stomachs, and the girl's intestines bled through the claw marks Ryan had made. One of her eyes was missing (he had stepped on it). Ryan surveyed them with dislike, his long, dark hair waving in a breeze as invisible and as unpresent as the ghost that he was. He knew he was dead. He knew what he must look like. His only regret was that his victims couldn't see what killed them.

He turned his back on the dead teenagers and drifted away into nothingness.

From the outside, the asylum looked much like it had back in the 18 and 1900's. The old gate was still standing, but the drive up to the old place had become over choked with trees and weeds and bits of filth thrown by adventurers. The ground around the base of the old asylum was blackened and no plants ever grew there, not even weeds. That was where the entire basement had blown out. The first floor was boarded up and mostly burned, and the second and third floors were basically intact, but very, very old. The whole place had fallen into such disrepair that people in town wondered why the present owner even kept it standing anymore. He said it was about tax reasons or some nonsense like that. The townsfolk knew it was a place of death, for those who went there never returned. You could hear screams come from the place at night sometimes, they said. No one but kids went up there these days, and the only adults that ever did were researchers working on book material. For some reason, they always returned, even from the depths of the house itself. The townsfolk knew there was also a girl of around eighteen that sometimes sung in a beautiful, sorrow-filled voice, but they knew who she was. Apparently her great-great-great granduncle had died in there when the Old Fire hit. Some fellow named Carr, but _her_ name was Young.

But they seemed to be the only ones ever to hang around there. Even the small Satanist groups that lived in the town dared not go there, for fear they would never return, and that was fine for Ryan Kuhn.

He may have been a restless, violent ghost, but he did not go _looking _for trouble. He was not stupid. He knew the two other ghosts that used to be there, one of the doctors and an old schizophrenic fellow, had already Passed. Apparently, some long lost relative of the doctor had come and laid the soul to rest by properly disposing of the body (or what had been left of it) and the doctor had been captured by some soul hunter that Ryan had snuck up on and killed. He had just "forgotten" to let the trapped soul out. Anyway, he couldn't, there were spells on the cube he was in, and why did he want to let one of his ancient tormentors out loose anyway? They had done this to him, everyone else had let him die, and they never cared for him at all. The doctor had finally vanished, but Ryan neither cared nor knew what had happened to him. He had a feeling he was going to be here forever.


	4. Ryan meets a girl

Note to the reader, Ryan's great-great-great grandniece is supposed to be based, loosely, on me. (except the skinny part, im 197 and would be that curvy due to my skeletal structure) And yes. I do sing a lot. I can't hear a song I know and _not_ sing to it. Thanks to Disturbed, there is one of their songs on here. Oh, and for the record, I am NOT narcissistic.

Here we go.

The singing girl was starting to intrigue him. He could hear her, day after day, just singing, but she never came into the ruined asylum. Ryan drifted into the unknown and reappeared outside the crumbling walls of his tomb. Dead trees, weeds, forest and filth lay before him. If he were a living man, it would have taken him ages to find her, but Ryan Kuhn was not a living man, so therefore could track her quite easily.

He followed her voice. It was deeper than a typical female's, but not so deep he couldn't tell she was a woman. She was singing a strange, depressing tune he did not recognize.

"…Over one last time…pray don't let the darkness cover me….deny…. everything…slowly walk away….to breath again….on my own…"

He followed her voice like he had followed so many women back in his day. She was walking around a clearing between dead trees with autumn leaves piled all around. But it was her clothes that totally threw Ryan off. She was not dressed like every other whore he had come across (and killed) but like a…well, like a boy. She wore loose fitting trousers, bright green with a metal skull lacquered to one of the pockets, which were set down near the calf. Chained straps hung off the back of them and the pockets near her hips were covered in black netting. She wore a simple white undershirt with a bloodred skull across her not-so-wasted breasts, like some livid tattoo, which he saw she had on one skinny forearm. It was a snake of fire curled around one wasted wrist with five names inscribed there. She had shoulder length copper hair with thick black streaks here and there and she had a bit of metal through one eyebrow.

All in all, she was the most bizarre girl he had ever seen in his life _or _unlife.

He snuck up behind her, her thin, lovely hourglass figure _Oh, how her back must hurt under the weight of her enormous breasts _and stood there, not doing anything, just waiting. Suddenly her singing stopped and she bent and picked something up off the ground. It was a key, tarnished and burned in places, but with a very ornate head to it. Ryan recognized it as the key to his basement cell, and his temper flared up at once. He pulled back an arm to throw her to the ground, when she turned around and her eyes traveled _up_, her eyes met his and he saw that they were the same exact gray-green as his own, very large, the corneas slightly turned down like a cat's. He faltered, and it gave her time to take a step back. Somehow, unbelievably, _she was seeing him_. She saw him for what he was, and by the look of surprise on her round, pale-skinned, yet beautiful Irish face, she _recognized_ him. This had never happened before, and for a moment he was confused. The girl's eyes were just like his…except the Irish tilt, they were _his_ eyes, the same gray-green, and in the sunlight, they were ringed with a flaming yellow color, giving her the hellish, demonic look he had seen in his own reflection in the water bowl many years ago. She was holding some sort of small, circular electronic and there was a wire connected to it going to her ears. Fear was not in her eyes, but a deep-seated curiosity, and a sense of joy. _Joy_ of all things. She was beautiful. Oh, she was beautiful to him. The only thing was, was that Ryan did not want to kill her. For some reason, something about her…then she spoke to him.

"What is your name?" her accent was odd, not English at all, but the question itself threw him for a loop. He tried to remember this basic bit of information, tried to recall that one piece of his identity, but came up short…he knew it started with an 'R'. Ray? Royce? Rolland? Randall? Ryan. Yes, that had been his name back then. Ryan. Ryan Kuhn. He felt an empty, hollow sort of sadness. That he be dead so long and insane for longer, that he forgot his own name! He formed the words on his lips but then remembered mortals could not hear the voices of the dead.

"My name…my name was Ryan…Ryan Kuhn." He tried to say, but his voice didn't come. He felt his lips forming the words, but he could not hear his own voice come from his throat. The girl nodded with a sad sort of understanding in her eyes.

"I'm Ranekaera. My friends call me Ghost." She replied, but like his own voice, Ryan could not hear her. Instead, he seemed to hear a deep girl's voice, like a thought, or the memory of one, come into his own head, and for a moment, he backed off and began clawing at his own head, beating his broken hands against the rusty bars of his cage in an attempt to get the foreign thoughts out of his head. It was then that the girl touched him.

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" he screamed hysterically, head raised and mouth open wide. It wasn't that she had touched him, or made as if to. Mortals could not physically touch a soul. For some reason, only a soul could touch a mortal. Her hand had not passed through him but had sunk an inch deep into his form and hit something solid, as if she had touched a living being instead of the violent, crazed soul that was his.

"I want to tell you something." Her thought-spoken voice said. Her face was totally serious, and Ryan flinched and drew back, away from her touch, away from her thoughts. Her eyes were freaking him out, those eyes that were just like his. Suddenly his whole frame froze rigid and memories that were not his really _did_ flood his mind. Sheafs of paper, yellowed with age. Names. Dates. Lines interlinking it all, and the name Dorothy Kuhn., his mother, next to a picture, sepia toned and tattered. His mother, after all this time. (I killed her, I killed the slut!) A line linking her name and picture with two more names and pictures, then two more. Her brothers and sisters. One name and picture, Ryan Kuhn (she named me after my uncle, the filthy whore) was linked with a woman, and from them, more lines and pictures, names and faces that meant nothing to him, and never had, for he had never met his whole family. One woman, Marjorice Kuhn, with a man, Scott Young, then a much newer line, linking this woman Marjorice with four other men, but the line coming from the Scott picture was clearer in Ryan's confused mind: a line and much newer picture labeled Ranekaera Kuhn Young.

The girl let go of Ryan and he staggered backwards, tripped over his straitjacket and fell on his can on the ground, dazed and staring.

He was staring at his Great-Great-Great Grandniece. Four times removed.


	5. Ryan and Ran go on a hunt

Borehamwood Asylum really is in Hertfordshire, England. As to whether or not it really burned down, I'm not sure. Death to all leafy bugs!

Girl can't be

(Mom was a slut, a good for nothing sack of shit-)

My grandniece?

(dog, kicked her like a dog, she's dead-)

Eyes are the same, everything else different, beautiful, she's beautiful

(strangle her with those chains on her trousers, make her eyes pop)

Wonder what she had for dinner, wonder what she thinks of me, why can she see me, what does she _want_, dear god, what does she want

(leafy bug on a stick)

From me? She has the key to my cell

(the whole family have been whores, her grandmother married five fucking times, the sluts, the cuntbags, the fucking _whores_, the gutter rats, leafy bug on a stick, skewered-)

Does she want my body?

(skewered like that prick Frederickston, wanna see her _bleed_)

"Stop it, Stop it, STOP IT!" he suddenly screamed, clawing at his own hair, which was more steel gray than black now. The non-stop traffic in his head came to a screeching halt and Ryan lay somber and quiet on the ground as if a switch in his head had been thrown. He lay still and unmoving, blank-eyed and lazy-limbed, a zombie with a cage on its head. Catotonic. He felt himself pass out of sight and into the netherworld for a moment, that blank gray, watery void where nothing existed and everything was dead. He saw his mother, and he ignored her, he was listening to some inner voice inside the cobwebby recesses of his head. Telling him to trust her.

(But I never trusted anyone, they always fucked me over)

Trust her…

(won't I won't do it, never, trust anyone-)

Trust her…

(I WON'T DO IT!)

GODDAMMIT RYAN, TRUST HER! She can help you…

(Okay!)

Ryan floated in the netherworld a moment longer, wondering why his sad, sorry life had to be this way. Why he had lived his whole life in fear of the world and in love with the girls, so in love he killed them, why he had killed his mother

(Whore)

And why he had ended up like this. He had to admit, being dead had its advantages. Like walking through walls for instance, however he couldn't walk through a wall with a spell on it, like the front doors of the asylum, they were in Latin, he had to obey Latin, if he didn't terrible pain would ensue…

And speaking of pain…

Ryan returned to the physical world with an unpleasant bump. It was no longer light outside and stars dotted the night sky. The girl was nowhere to be seen, and Ryan thought _she went home for the night_. He drifted back to Borehamwood asylum, where he had lived and where he died, and drifted through one of the front windows. _They_ had no spell on them, heh, heh, heh.

She was lying there on the floor, covered by a thin, raggedy black comforter and laying on a very thin black pillow, her white tank top replaced by a knee length black night shirt, her pants still on. Her two-tone Halloween hair lay fanned across the pillow like silken nightshade, the copper like fire under the light of the moon which shone through the window. The key to his cell hung on a chain around her neck. Ryan dared not take it. If she could touch him, then she could also hurt him, and he didn't like being hurt. And girl or not, kin or not, that voice had told him to trust her, so trust her he would have to.

Ryan returned to his lonely basement cell and slept the sleep of the dead.

Ran awoke to annoyingly bright sunshine and she instinctively drew away from it, dragging her pillow and blanket through about an inch and a half of dust and old soot.

She stood up, still squinting at the onslaught of sunlight, and began shaking the accumulated dust of nearly ninety years from her bed things and rolling them up. She was here in Hertfordshire England on an exchange trip gone bad. She was a freshman in college back in the states and on the exchange trip, she had gotten lost and missed the plane back. Now she was stuck here. But she didn't mind. In fact, she much preferred it here in England. Much more history. Then she had come across this old asylum, and decided to bed here for the past two weeks. She had heard all the stories, the rumors, and she had done a little research at the town library. There she had come across the old names and dates, and eventually, her great-great-great-granduncle, four times removed.

She had found a relative in England. She had also read a teensy article about some family in the states who had inherited the glass house of an eccentric man named Cyrus Kritikos, and the name The Jackal had come up. She had done some extensive research there, and again was led to her granduncle, Ryan Kuhn.

She had been able to see ghosts all her life. She herself was mentally ill, although most people would never guess it. She had been in and out of nearly every mental institution in the state of Maine, and even a few outside ME. She had Bipolar disorder, was borderline Schizoid, and had borderline personality disorder. She was a pretty girl, but everyone thought she was crazy. She was nearly every bit neglected, abused, hurt, lost, confused, and misled as Ryan himself had been. Short, slashing scratch scars crisscrossed her inner forearms, although she insisted she was not suicidal.

The key she had found yesterday hung on a chain she had found in the asylum, around her neck. She intended to go around the asylum and try it in ever door she could find until she found what it unlocked.

She dumped her bedding on a couch in an old lounge, turned around, and came face to face with Ryan Kuhn.

Ryan had been spying on her for some time, confused, half formed thoughts chasing round his head, until she turned around, saw him, and gasped, eyes wide. Then she got annoyed. Then passive. Was she as crazy as he was? But he knew what she intended to do with the key, oh yes, he knew. What else would she do? Keep it for a souvenir? Shove it up the neighbor's ass 'till he turned purple? No. She was going to go on a hunt. Searching. Snooping. Ryan tried to subdue his temper, but just couldn't'. He drew a hand back and slashed her right across the collarbones with the exposed bones of his fingers, creating three great slashes there. They bled copiously and she cried out in pain and surprise, drawing away from him like a wounded animal, a wounded look on her face.

"Don't!" she cried, tears forming in her, _his_ eyes. Then he noticed the other scars, the ones on her arms, and the bruises on the rest of her body that he could see. He added those with her thinness and put two and two together, as only he could.

She was almost every bit as insane and every bit as abused as he had been. He immediately felt pity for this creature, the first pity he had felt in, well…in forever. He could not remember ever feeling this emotion called pity, and he didn't like it. Somehow it made him sadder than ever. He pointed at the tarnished skeleton key around her bleeding neck and raised an eyebrow.

"I want to know what it goes to." She whimpered.

Ryan just intended to take her to where she wanted to go.

He beckoned to her and began walking in the direction of the basement stairs.


	6. Roll dem bones

Hey, guys, it's me, thanks for the reviews and keep'em coming. Oh, and as for the title of this chapter, I believe it's the title of some song or other, but since I don't know what song that is, suffice to say that I did not think it up alone, I just thought it appropriate.

Rock on.

Ryan knew exactly where he was going.

He was leading this mortal down to his basement cell, which for him had not changed a bit; save for the burnt wood and charred stone, it was still as dark and depressing as it had always been. But the mortal, Ranekaera, it transpired, had not a clue as to where Ryan was leading her. He reached the basement stairs, which were falling into disrepair, and Ran suddenly shrieked in terror, bringing all the screams of his victims back, which sent a bolt of lust through him. He suppressed it, however, and turned to face her, a grim expression on his tired, bloody face. She had run into a spider web, but she was taking it rather badly. Her eyes were wide with stark terror and she was flailing uncontrollably, hyperventilating and simultaneously shivering and convulsing. He reached out to steady her, or perhaps to

(kill her)

Slap her, but before he could, the stairs collapsed, spilling the terrified girl down to the basement below—

Where sharpened, burnt stakes awaited like some pit of hell.

Without thinking, Ryan swooped down and caught her before she hit and floated her to relative safety, dumping her on her unsteady feet. He got right in her face, glaring with his dead, yellow eyes, and growled, baring his bloody fangs.

"Stay behind me." He snarled, and without another word, he vanished from her sight and reappeared again halfway down the hall, his back turned to her. He kept walking, until he heard her run to catch up, then he flung an arm out to stop her and clotheslined her. She fell to the cold, stone floor with a choked cry of anger.

Ryan pivoted in midair like the ghost that he was, and just stared down at her with his cold, dead gaze. Then he drifted weirdly sideways, into his cell, where he had died.

She got to her feet and followed, shivering because she was cold, and she saw his body.

Ryan had died in the middle of his cell, and there his body still lay, in a heap of charred, delicate bones and rags and bits of decay, the straitjacket an unrecognizable rag and the metal cage settled on the naked collarbones of his sorry corpse.

"Happy? Well, are you? Are you?" he shrieked, laughing now because she had fallen to her knees next to him. She was doing something to him, though, and that gave Ryan pause. He fell to his knees beside her and his dead body (_really_ dead, he thought with a giggle) and watched her careful movements. She was…fiddling with the cage on his head. She took the key from around her neck, and that was when Ryan backhanded her again. She went flying across the cold, stone floor and hit hard, opening up both elbows and the palm of one hand with a muffled cry of pain.  
"I was trying to see if the key fit the keyhole underneath the frigging cage, dammit!" she cried angrily, eyes narrowed in pain as she got back to her knees and looked at both of him, the dead body and the departed (somewhat angry) soul.

Ryan watched her crawl back towards his pitiful skeleton and this time let her do what she meant to do, eyes narrowed in dislike and suspicion. As he watched, he grinded his teeth and let her get on with it.

She carefully tilted his blackened skull with its mop of crispy gray-black hair, and then gently set it and the cage back down. Ryan shifted his shoulders uncomfortably; he couldn't felt what she was doing to his long-dead body, but it made him uncomfortable anyway. She then took his body by the shoulders and carefully lifted his entire skeleton off the floor, from where it was laying on its front.

"Hey, hold yourself up a minute." She instructed, laughing weakly at her own joke. He laughed too, but it was the laugh of the insane. He did as she said and carefully held his upper body up off the floor for her, not liking the feeling of not being able to feel his own body, letting his skull droop to the floor with the weight of the cage.

She bent down on all fours, sticking her backside out, and began feeling along the bottom ridge of the rusty metal cage and inserted the key into the darkness. There was a loud, rusty shriek of rusted metal on rusted metal, and the cage fell open with a deafening clang. It fell to the floor, spilling Ryan's grizzled hair free. Ryan grimaced and turned his head, thinking his skull was going to pop off, but it did not. What it _did_ do was seem to smile. Ryan smiled with it, and as he did, the cage on his own head popped open with a rusty shriek of protest, and he reached up and took it off, throwing it into the corner. He shook his head, free at last, and felt his long hair brush his face and neck, running his hands over a neck not burdened with a cage, feeling the curvature of his own flesh (well, not exactly, but what the hell). He started to laugh at the sheer joy of it, and as he laughed, he wrapped both arms around his great x3 grandniece and lifted her clear off the floor, dancing around the room with her, as her head shook like a rag doll's. She seemed to join in for a bit, just for his benefit, and then began pushing against his chest, saying enough was enough. Ryan set her down and kissed her roughly instead, biting her tongue as he did so, and _feeling_, feeling for the first time in his unlife, feeling her warm tongue against his own rather cold one. He felt her go rigid as he kissed her, then felt her mouth disconnect and her teeth clamp down on his already quite abused lower lip.

They pulled apart, blood dripping down from her mouth, nothing running down from his, and she stuck her tongue out and adjusted a shiny metal barbell in her tongue. They stared at each other for awhile, when she smiled.

"I bite too." She said, and she turned and walked away, back towards the non existent stairs.


	7. Killing spree for eternity

Hey, this'll probably be my last chapter, but not my last story! I may do something on Breaker next, but I don't know…You'll just have to wait. (Insert sinister laugh)

Ryan followed her out to the pit of broken wood shards, and grabbed her from behind. He threw her bodily up the ruined stairs, and was satisfied when he heard her grunt of pain as her bottom hit the cold floor above. Crouching, Ryan bunched his non existent muscles and leapt up to land beside her on the first floor. She was rubbing her backside and grimacing in pain. Ryan laughed. Suddenly, a different voice made him pause.

"Miss Young? Are you in here?" a voice called. At her name, the girl looked up in surprise.

"I'm over here, by the stairs." She called back. Pretty soon, two or three men and one woman came round the corner, the woman holding a flashlight. They, of course, course, could not see Ryan. Or the death that undoubtedly awaited them.

"Thank goodness, are you alright, lass? We heard you screaming earlier and…" the man trailed off.

"Good lord! It's a murder! Alright, explain yourself, right now, missie!" exclaimed the woman, who had a thick British accent. They had seen the bodies of the two murdered teenagers Ryan had just killed and thought Ran had done it. Ryan got angry at the woman, for being a woman, and for accusing Ryan's "new friend" of murder, a murder that _he_ had committed. That was not fair. To him, anyway. Why should she take all the credit?

Ryan screamed, then laughed at the newcomers. Four more tonight! He prepared to run at them, and claw their eyes out, but Ran flung out an arm and held him back.

"Let me help you. They're gonna send me back to my own country and frankly, I don't wanna go." She grabbed something off the floor as she spoke. It was a tarnished candle holder. Ryan nodded, then started laughing again. He was still laughing as he and Ran closed in for the kill.

Later, after Ran had washed up in a stream nearby (she was covered in blood), she dusted off one of the couches in the lounge of the old abandoned asylum, where she now felt at home, and prepared to sleep. Ryan poked her hard in the small of her back and he handed her another, more ragged blanket. She smiled at him, and he pulled her closer and kissed her again, more forcefully than last time, and he asked a question.

"Will you stay here with me?"

"Why?" she said, laying down for the night.

Ryan drooped his head, now more lightweight than ever without the cage, and sighed.

"I don't like being alone anymore. And it's more fun killing with someone else around. They can do more damage." He admitted. She seemed to think about this for awhile, then nodded.

"On one condition." She said. She beckoned Ryan closer, and he leaned in for the secret.

The air was brisk and clean, autumn leaves swirling and whispering in their dead language that only they can understand. A quarter moon floats in the black night sky and all around them, on street corners, in buildings, are people, living, breathing mortals, humans. Ryan is giddy and desperately wants to go over to a gaggle of stupid cheerleaders and saw their legs off, but he resists.

Ran has a different idea. She wears an old straitjacket from the asylum and carries a long, curved, silver handled knife. (Like the kind chefs use to strip meat from bones with).

"You remember the plan?" she asks him, leaning in. Ryan nods eagerly, non existent adrenaline shooting through his non existent veins. He and Ran approach the first house on the block, Ran's knife gleaming in the porch light. Ryan follows, his long, sharp fingernails biting into his wrists in anticipation. Ran steadies the knife. She knocks on the door. She and Ryan share a look, and they share the same maniac gleam in their eyes. A woman opens up the door. Ryan and Ran talk at the same time, one voice the woman can hear, and one, dear gods, one that she probably wished she could; it probably would have saved her life.

"Trick or treat!"

Happy Halloween everyone. Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.


End file.
